Sidebar: Points- U and V Values of a Surface in Revit

A quick note about “Sidebars”…I’m going to be using them just to point out stuff that doesn’t fit into my overall project demonstration, but is still interesting to consider.

One of the nice things about the conceptual environments in Revit 2010 and 2011 are the point tools.  One that I really don’t use often is the Surface Hosted Point….not to confused by the Host by intersect method.  I would use it more, but its really hampered by the fact that there is no way to re-parameterize a surface so you could apply the U and V values against a consistent range of Max and Min values.

 

With that said, it could be useful if you need to find the plane normal to a surface.  Also if the surface is not going to change and you can workout the range for the U and V values you might be able position the point accurately. 

I attached a short video showing some of its features. It does work with Imported surfaces.  I have used it mostly with AutoCAD 2011 surfaces, but I’m sure Rhino and others will work as well.

Points Hosted on Surface

Notice how the “Hosted U Parameter” in the Video didn’t accept a predicted value.

More to come…

Getting Started: The Site: #001

Over the next few posts, I’ll look at how to best capture site information for use in some very basic site analysis.  The key application for this will be Google Earth, as it seems to be the best tool at my disposal to begin capturing this information.

http://earth.google.com/intl/en/index.html

Note: If you are using Google Earth in a Professional Context, there are some sticky items in the EULA to watch out for.

http://earth.google.com/intl/en-US/license.html

Why Chicago?

I lived in Chicago, but now live in New York City.  I love both cities, but I couldn’t think of a good place to put the project I had in mind.   That with my natural tendency towards water, and a somewhat irreverent notion of a second Burnham Pier(2.0) in mind , I landed here.

Pier 2.0 – An Architectural Design Blog that happens to be about software

My goal is pretty simple; illustrate how a wide variety of software tools can aide the design and delivery process.

During the course of the project I'm going to try to cover a large range of topics and processes so to better understand and illustrate workflows.  With that in mind I going to try not to duplicate work, but instead find ways to reuse information.

Just to get started…..

The Site